our darling screamer

My cousins got Dave and I the perfect card. The front had a picture of a baby crying and the inside said, “I swear, I should’ve just gotten a pet rooster.” Lately we’ve been fighting our own little rooster.

Picture not shown: him being a fusser gus.

Leo wakes up every night between 3am and 3:30am to eat. He’s not really hungry – he’s just used to getting up to eat (as evidenced by him not taking a full feeding and waking up like clockwork at the same exact time). Someone put it this way, “if you knew you’d get an ice cream cone at a certain time every night if you woke up, you’d get up, too!” The last 2 nights have been Mission: Break Leo of His 3am Feeding.

So we let him cry.

We go in every 5-10 minutes to check on him, give him his pacifier and flip him back to his stomach (he sleeps best on his stomach but when he’s angry rolls over and then gets stuck like a little flipped turtle). He’ll stop fussing for 5 minutes, then start up again. The whole thing typically takes about 40 minutes until he gives up and goes to sleep. Generally he’ll sleep until 5:30 or so, when we repeat the process (it only takes 10 minutes at 5:30am) until 7am, when he gets up to eat.

We’ve heard it takes 3-5 nights to break a habit or set a new one for babies. We’re on night 2 (and hoping it doesn’t take more than 5 nights).

Leo also wakes up at 12am to eat. We think this one is a habit, too, but we’re starting with one at a time.

6 thoughts on “our darling screamer”

So we convinced ourselves to do this by this thinking: we’re not sleeping through the night anyways…so we either continue like this for possibly years…or we commit to encouraging each other to be consistant for 3-5 days…and if it’s 8 days?! Well, then it won’t be 8 months…
You guys rock!
So proud of you

I am trying to start a habit of getting regular exercise….so much easier said than done, but I know time for myself has to be a priority. Trying to break a diet soda habit. But my real point of posting this comment was to tell you that I think the term “fusser gus” is freaking adorable. 🙂